Bookshops throughout Ireland, Britain and the US are poised to meet their greatest challenge: how to sell the latest Harry Potter book, which goes on sale tomorrow morning, without being stampeded in the process.
This is the fourth volume in a series of seven by J.K. (Joanne) Rowling, who has not only presented the world with a weedy super-hero, but in the process has amassed a huge following, and is being hailed as the saviour of the written word.
She will probably succeed in having wizardry recognised as an exam subject and - oh yes, has made herself and her happy, sworn-to-secrecy Muggle (i.e., non-wizard) publishers very wealthy.
At midnight tonight the first copies of the new book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, will be available at Easons in O'Connell Street. A free set of books will be presented to the first child in the queue.
There is, however, no guarantee of magical powers. If this witching-hour rendezvous is either too early or too late for normal, hype-impervious households, all bookstores will be busy with Harry Potter Day business tomorrow.
About 40 bookstores throughout Ireland are awaiting deliveries of the sacred text, about which nothing is known save that this Securicor-protected volume sees Harry taking his first steps in the always hazardous direction of romance. Still, he's had bigger problems: his mean and horrible relatives who made him live in a cupboard under the stairs, not forgetting Voldemort, the bad wizard who killed Harry's wizard parents; the Dark Side baddies and the giant serpent with the evil eye; and then there was that mass murderer in the last novel as well as those dream-stealing Dementors. The books have become steadily longer and the new one comprises 750 pages. And a lot can happen to a reader, never mind a boy superhero, in the course of a saga.
But fear not. Harry is resourceful.
As for his author and her publishers, with sales of 35 million worldwide and a print run of 1.5 million for this new novel, Harry Potter has little chance of disappearing into a puff of smoke.
Should you be watching out for shooting stars or vast numbers of owls as a sign of the book's arrival, you would be advised to concentrate all efforts instead on sighting a blue Ford Anglia - like the flying one in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Nice little car, but easy enough to hijack - hardly a speedster. Which brings us to the burning question of security.
Are the books arriving by sea or by air? Are the publishers worried about terrorists? Hijacking? Bad weather? Children's riots? "It could be a problem," said Cormac Kinsella of Rep Force Ireland.
There is also the reality of greedy parents who keep the books for themselves. How about Jehovah's Witnesses? There have been suggestions that J.K. Rowling is just a cover for the real author, a small boy, also called Harry, who lives on rock cakes and reads a lot of old comics for his ideas. "I haven't heard that," said Mr Kinsella. "It must be a rumour."
